Psalm 119:129-136
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Sermon: Weeds & Wishes (again)!
A paralegal, an associate, and a partner of a prestigious law
firm are walking through a city park and they find an antique oil lamp. They
rub it and a Genie comes out in a puff of smoke. The Genie says, "I
usually only grant three wishes, so I'll give each of you one." "Me
first!" says the paralegal. "I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a
speedboat with Tom Cruise." Poof! She's gone. "Me next!" says
the associate. "I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with a
professional hula dancer on one side and a Mai Tai on the other." Poof!
He's gone. "You're next," the Genie says to the partner. The partner
says: "I want those two back in the office after lunch."
A husband and wife in their sixties were coming up on their
40th wedding anniversary. Knowing his wIfe loved antiques, he bought a
beautiful old brass oil lamp for her. When she unwrapped it, a genie appeared.
He thanked them and gave each of them one wish. The wife wished for an all
expenses paid, first class, around the world cruise with her husband. Shazam!
Instantly she was presented with tickets for the entire journey, plus expensive
side trips, dinners, shopping, etc. The husband, however, wished he had a
female companion who was 30 years younger. Shazam! Instantly he turned 93 years
old.
Today’s scripture about King Solomon
reminded me of all the various jokes about three wishes… or two wishes… or sometimes just one wish. It’s a pretty common refrain, right? It’s so familiar that Wikipedia has a page
called, ‘the three wish joke’ that explains the hook at the end of the joke.
Solomon dreams that he comes before God,
and God invites him to make a request. This
is an echo of Moses who came before God up on a mountaintop, and David who came
before God. And, when you know the context, Solomon’s wish makes a lot of
sense. Solomon does not need a rod and
staff like Moses, because the Jews are not in captivity. Nor does he need military resource like his
father David. The challenges that lie
before Solomon are mostly administrative, as he tries to bring together tribes
from the north and the south under one united government. It shows practicality and humility…. And while, if you read before or after
this small passage, you would learn that Solomon is anything but a perfect
king, this little snippet seems impressive and insightful.
If you had one wish, what would it be? Would
you wish for the Bahamas with a handsome companion? If a fairy godmother
appeared at the foot of your bed before you went to sleep, what would you ask
for? A fancy new carriage to take you to
glamorous places? If you were able to
have a conversation like this with God, what would you wish for? Would it be
personal, or would it be for the world?
Would you wish for an end to hunger, or poverty, or world peace?
Maybe you’d be tempted to ask to begin
God’s reign, for the kingdom of heaven to manifest on earth. Apparently many in Jesus’ time were also
curious about the kingdom of heaven. In
today’s Gospel reading, Jesus continues to answer those questions with his
paradoxical parables (And continues to confuse us with riddles about weeds like
the Mustard Seed!)
I remember in high school there was a
big trend to have a Mustard Seed engraved with your name or something and wear
it in a little jar, to demonstrate that just a tiny seed of faith can blossom
in the kind of devotion that provides proverbial cover for birds…
But if you were a first century farmer
in Palestine, looking for the Kingdom of Heaven, you would hardly ask God for a
Mustard Seed. The Mustard seed is a
tiny, tiny seed…a seed nearly
invisible the naked eye, and therefore very difficult to ‘weed’ out if you were
planting a bag of seed. Before you know
it, you have a 15-foot tree in the middle of your field, expansive enough to
harbor birds and blocking all the sun on your field. In college, when I worked in a state park, twice
a year we would take large groups of volunteers out into the grounds to pull
Garlic Mustard, another variation in the mustard family that is aggressive,
invasive and a problem from Michigan to Oregon.
This plant can grow in full sun or full shade, and the roots of Garlic Mustard produce a chemical that is toxic
to other plants, therefore crowding out all the other crop or species native to
the area. But we had to be very specific
in our timing – wait too long and you’ll be helping the plant shake its seeds
lose all over the park, and end up in a worse situation next year.
Jesus is talking to 1st
century farmers, telling them the kingdom of heaven is like something that may
be present at any moment but they can’t really see it, and it will likely make
their lives more challenging and possibly threaten their economic livelihood.
What about Yeast? Jesus
says the Kingdom of heaven is like a woman who takes three measures of flour
and mixes it with yeast until it’s all leavened. If you had a conversation with
God, do you think anyone would wish for yeast? In Bible Study this week, one of
our members answered without hesitating; ‘well, yeah! Without it you can’t make
the bread rise!’ And that’s true –
leaven is yeast, and without it you’d have – unleavened bread.
If Jesus is speaking to a
Jewish audience, how might this sound different? Yeast is useful substance but can also be a
noxious substance. Yeast causes things to ferment, of course… like in beer and wine and even chocolate! But yeast, or leaven, is also dangerous. It
can cause food poisoning, or be fatal in large quantities. It is the same
substance that causes bodily decomposition, and an infection in your blood can
kill you. And, like the dangers of gluten cross-contamination when cooking,
yeast can be sneaky and still be present when you think you’ve contained
it. Once a year every Jewish woman would
scour her home to remove all trace of yeast, in order to be ritually clean to
celebrate the Passover meal.
Additionally, leavened
bread is a timed affair. Too little
leaven in a flour mixture won’t raise the bread, but too much leaven can ruin
the bread, or make it harmful to your health.
And the longer you let the yeast work in flour, the more it ferments, so
working with yeast is working against the clock. Therefore, the most surprising element
of this parable is the amount of flour, which we might not recognize in English
if we don’t speak in ‘measures’. “Three measures” is the usual
translation for the original Greek “tria sata” which is a little over a bushel
of flour. In Jesus’ parable, the woman has just created
enough leavened bread to provide food for a large wedding feast – but there’s
no indication that she’s a caterer. In a
society that was mostly poor, she just took a year’s supply of flour and caused
it all to ferment…beginning the process
in which the food could possibly become fatal.
I mean Jesus, what are you saying
here??! That God is fermenting the kingdom of heaven? Is heaven like a mold? That if we don’t
choose it in time, it may be a threat to our health?
These,
no doubt, would be strange things to wish for.
Would
you wish for a hidden treasure, like the man who found it in a field? Notice how the man wasn’t digging around in
his own field… he was like a trespasser that found oil in
someone else’s backyard, and then buys the home for cheap without disclosing
the value. We have labels for that kind
of person in our modern world… and lawsuits.
Would
you wish for that pearl? Maybe if you were a jeweler in search of the perfect
diamond, and found it! Whoo! But would
you sell your home, your car, cash out your pension and all your savings to own
it? What will you do then? You can’t eat a precious gem…
this picture of the kingdom of heaven seems impulsive. irrational. A little insane really.
So the kingdom of heaven is something
nearly invisible but overwhelming and dangerous, delicious and growing but
time-sensitive, with a dash of good fortune, deception, impulse and
insanity. Who is wishing for the kingdom
of heaven again?
The kingdom of heaven, in reality,
interrupts our expectations. The kingdom of heaven is disruptive of our
routines. The kingdom of God upends your typical understanding of economy…
of what utility is, what beauty is, what’s really important in life. The kingdom of God disrupts all those
ideas. So much of our lives are built on
our routines, our expectations, rational behavior, transactional relationships,
and purchasing power… Sometimes it’s only in our birthday wishes
that we dare become extravagant. But God encourages us to reach for the
extravagant in the kingdom of heaven.
And God doesn’t let us off without a challenge; choosing kingdom will
test your limits and your expectations.
It is expansive and overwhelming and cannot be contained. It cannot be put in a box or kept near
anything else without fermenting it. It is contagious, irrational, and
threatening, because it changes the existing order.
All of these things would prompt fear
and disbelief in the average listener… and indeed, probably do in us.
Maybe we’d settle for a week in the Bahamas…. Or, for those of us who are older and
have a more discerning sense of what’s important in life be for a health issue
to disappear, or to have more time with our loved ones, or children.
But truly, God is not a genie in a
bottle. God doesn’t vanish away our
problems with a little wish, and the kingdom of heaven won’t just appear in a
year as if we’ve dropped a Mustard Seed.
All we can do is lean into it, each day, a little more, striving for the
extravagant joy of disruption, the irrational impulses of love, the chaos of
change. None of these come without risk,
but all of them come with the chance for greater happiness. And for any wish that we have or change that
we face, Solomon’s example is a good one; to listen for God in our quiet times
and in our dreams, in our prayers and in our thoughts. To listen with a
discerning heart for the way between, the way of wisdom, the way to lean into
the Kingdom of God.
That is also my wish is that today, in
thinking through our proposed church reorganization, that we might embrace
Solomon’s desire and be sure to listen to each other with a discerning heart
and find the wisdom within each decision.
May our heart be open, and our courage
mustered to live into whatever changes we face. Amen.
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